Basic Questions & Answers thread

MTZ Boss's init routine only has one line that writes 8 to somewhere. Sure enough, that's the one you're looking for.

 

Thanks. I got what I needed. Though the laser code doesn't like the extra hits. I'll have to fix that somehow. Edit: Never mind. Somehow it corrected itself.

Edit 2: I know the problem. It is only when the boss gets hit during the intermediate "lets move to the other side of the room." I'll have to fix that by making the boss higher.

Edit 3: Aaannnd done.

 

Hi, I'm pretty new here to this site and I've decided to do a little hacking. For starters, I looked around the site and found a thread containing a guide on how to Sonic 1 Split Disassembly by Qjimbo on Youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDAJpXf9xyI

I've done pretty much evrything he told me to do, or what he explained in that video. After that I was confused, I know my Green Hill Zone is messed up so it needs to be fixed.
But I'm just gonna leave it as it is and edit on another level. The problem is, how do I not mess up?

 

IT COMES MESSED UP. Yeah. I know. There is a guide to fix it, though I can't find it at the minute.



Now, here's my current problem.

 

A quick dirty way to do this is to only use colors whose RGB values are in the X0Y0Z0 form where X, Y and Z are even values between 0 and 14 (E). Which means for example E06020 or 4080A0. It will be an approximation (it has been proven that "white" on the Genesis isn't E0E0E0) but if it's just for editing purposes it should be accurate enough. To get more accurate values you should use XXYYZZ (still with even values only).
Also remember that you can use only one palette line per 8x8 tile, so you're limited to 15 colors + 1 transparency in every 8x8 tile. Unless you pull off some magic trickery of course.

 

http://mrjester.hapisan.com/01_PBLC/BMP29BIT.exe

Put a bitmap file named "FULL.bmp" in the same directory as that, run it, and it'll output MD.bmp with all the colours changed to 9-bit. (This is not an editor by the way)

 

There's was this tool called "arctool" on X-Cult, but it's not their anymore. It let's you extract data from the .arc files in Sonic 2006. The Wii u8 Extractor tools won't work on it.

 

I'm too stressed out to do more searching. I exported a .obj file with the SADX level editor, now I'm trying to find a program to use that will let me load the OBJ file, WITH textures, and also has a triangulate option. I was using Google Sketch but apparently they haven't conceived the convenience of loading OBJ files, and any plugins I find don't load the textures with the file. :/ Anyone got a good recommendation for a program that will help?

 

I'm not sure how Sega screen in Sonic 2 works, but if the art and sprites mappings are the only things you changed, the issue may be in these lines:

Code (ASM):

1. Mapunc_Sonic:   BINCLUDE    "sonic3stuff/Sonic3map.asm"
2. MapRUnc_Sonic:  BINCLUDE    "sonic3stuff/Sonic3PLC.asm"
3.  

You include ASM files as binary data, so the compilator just insert the contents of the files instead of assembling their code. Also, if file sizes are odd, then some data can be wrongly aligned, probably that caused pallete glitches.
Try to use "include" command.

 

Part 1 is this, indeed: load S3&K mappings and dplcs with S3&K format ticked, switch to S2 format and save.

Part 2: In build.bat, edit the line containing "fixpointer" to point to the correct running frames. Since you are copying the sprite and mappings unchanged, you will have to find this:

Code (Text):

1. off_3A294 MapRUnc_Sonic $2D 0 4

and replace with this:

Code (Text):

1. off_3A294 MapRUnc_Sonic $21 0 4

Part 3: open the sprite (running frames) in SonMapEd and note the sizes and order of the sprite pieces. For S3&K Sonic, all four running frames have the same number and sizes for all pieces. You will then need to find "SonicRunningSpriteScaleData" in s2.asm and edit accordingly.

Part 4: even if everything has been done correctly so far, things will appear garbled in the Sega screen. This is because of integer overflows due to the art tiles in use in the running sprites. If you have updated recently from SVN, it is easier to do: find "CopySpriteTilesToRAMForSegaScreen" in s2.asm, find the following nearby line:

Code (ASM):

1.     if 1==0
2.  

and replace it by

Code (ASM):

1.     if 1==1

You can look in the SVN file to see what needs to be changed otherwise.

Edit: Oh, I nearly forgot:
Part 5: grab a slice of VRAM and edit mappings/sprite/objB1.bin in SonMapEd accordingly.

 

Thanks to a little help from MarkeyJester, this little guy is moving right. Now I want to put hit points on him. Say...3.

Code (ASM):

1.  
2. Obj45_Main:             ; XREF: Obj45_Index
3.     addq.b  #2,$24(a0) 
4.     move.w  #$50,$30(a0)
5.     move.w  #$10,$32(a0)
6.     move.w  #$0000,2(a0)        ; moves #$0000 to the art tile's SST (it's 2 in S1 and S2)     
7.     move.l  #Map_obj45,4(a0)    ; moves the mappings into the mapping's SST    
8.     move.b  #$20,$19(a0)       
9. ;-----------------------------------
10.     move.b  #$7,$20(a0) ; make object bust like badnik (for now)
11.     move.b  #3,$21(a0) ;set hits to 3?
12. ;-----------------------------------
13.     move.b  #4,1(a0)    ; use screen coordinates (such as the ones you see in debug mode)      
14.     move.b  #4,$18(a0)  ; set priority
15.     rts
16.  

What happens is Sonic bounces off of the "boss" and the collision disappears. It stays gone until Sonic leaves the area and reloads the boss again. So, how do the regular bosses do it?

 

Is there a non-optimizing assembler? I have code that is 0(a5) but it assembles to what (a5) would assemble to and I have my reasons for wanting 0(a5) to remain 0(a5).

 

That would be the assembler's optimisation settings, these are written in "build.bat" and are given to the assembler, now it will depend on what assembler you're using.

As an example, I have a Sonic 1 source here with me currently using asm68k, and inside "build.bat" (opened with a text editor) I see:

Code (Text):

1. asm68k /o op+ /o os+ /o ow+ /o oz+ /o oaq+ /o osq+ /o omq+ /p /o ae- sonic1.asm, s1built.bin

With each of the /o ? being an optimisation setting, Asm69k provided a list:



Simply remove the /o settings you don't want, for example, if I don't want the assembler to change add commands to addq (if it can at any point), then I'd either remove "/o oaq+" from that line, or change the + to a -. The other assemblers should have a similar method of optimisation settings. Though I'm not familiar with this process so you may want to have a play around.

EDIT: Infact, I have a question of my own...

Recently, I've been getting used to using branch commands without specifying the size/type (I.e. I mean without setting .s for short or .w for word), now I've found this useful having the assembler automatically shorten branch commands to short if it can and word if it can't, as this saves me time not having the assembler complain or having to change the size back and forth because I edit/change huge heaps of code. HOWEVER, I have noticed that the assembler (Asm68k in this case) sets short/word correctly for branches that branch backwards, but NOT branches that branch forward, infact, it sets all of them word even though most of them can be set short quite easily. Now I'll assume this is a bug, if not, then what's causing this, and is there a fix/correction for this issue? (Really, I could do with using best optimisation possible right now without the irritation).

 

asmx will always optimize this operand. Both SNASM68k and asm68k allow controlling the various optimizations.

I have a private version of asmx I made that allows control of optimizations (I used it to make a bit perfect assembly from the Sonic 1 disassembly). However from what I can tell the asmx software license does not allow redistribution of asmx with modifications (since no specific license was specified) and the asmx author does not respond to his email.